A fine WordPress.com site

Month: August 2014

Lucky, aren’t we? We have super friends who like us enough to take us with them on vacation. Nope, not our usual Moosehead adventures, but a new adventure at the camp in the Adirondacks that belongs to the family of our friends.

One morning I got up extra early and hopped in a kayak. The sunrise pictures are from that quiet moment alone, just me and the loons (one of which you can see in the lower right of the photo above), and then a deer at the water’s edge. I like kayaking alone because I don’t like to be in a hurry to get anywhere and I like having plenty of time to look around and listen, paddle a little, then float, etc.

~adirondack chairs were in abundance~

Picture lots of cabins with a central main house for game-playing and a porch for eating and hanging out on the porch swings; another building with the kitchen (two ovens!) in it as well as pingpong and laundry and nearby a funny little fridge room; an outdoor shower on the bluff; lots of porches and piney woods; a boat house with boats (all sorts) and lifejackets for every stage of life; a sandbox, horseshoes, clay tennis court. Some cabins have bathrooms and some don’t.

Ours didn’t. But we didn’t mind as we were delighted by our luck in being assigned to the Water Cabin: just a couple of feet from the water, the loons, the splashy fish, and the amazing sunrise reflections on the ceiling. And this bridge was in our backyard, right past the girls’ forest fort and onto a tiny rocky outcropping with one chair.

Some of my very favorite girls were there, so I brought “hair molish” (nail polish) along for doing toes. And a tiny knitted chicken who could “lay” little eggs (white beans). The chicken needed a nest in the forest of course, and a chair, and a bench for her collection of pine cones, and a bed for naps. And another bed for different naps. And a broom made out of a white pine frond.

~breakfast porch~~this guy in the hat oversees the pingpong room~

Everyone was entered into the pingpong tournament and I played the first pingpong since I was at camp a very long time ago. I remembered that sometimes I shriek when I miss. (This could also be a good strategy for putting off my opponents.) And I wasn’t as bad as Sylvan expected! In fact my game was a good match, against a very excellent 10 year-old, in which I only lost by two points. I was challenged during Bananagrams when it was suggested that interjections like “aw” and “ugh” were not acceptable words, and was ultimately victorious when a Scrabble dictionary was consulted.There was plenty of space for everyone to have their needs met, from raucous swimming on the dock to hours of waterskiing and tubing (thanks to the dads who drove the boat), to shady reading spots and board games, cooking for a crowd or fending for oneself in the kitchen. It was such a generous, easy and inclusive place to spend time; our hosts embraced us in the natural flow of the days. Truly, it was OK to do whatever you felt like.

One morning was pancake breakfast over the fire pit, by two of our hosts. Extra delicious with the smoky fire! The wind was picking up as the weather was shifting, which made it a little exciting to pour (aim?) the pancake batter.

~yummy morning light on the path from our cabin~

On the last day we collected balsam so we could sew pillows with the girls. My lucky friend had some wonderful fabric samples with her and it was pretty hard to choose. Clothesline? Froggies with umbrellas? Tiny Japanese bunnies? Owls?! The weather was wild and windy, so an inside project was perfect.

And they smell amazing. So grateful to vacate the premises and enjoy some time away with some wonderful folks.

~MURICA!~

OK, enough with the adorable toenails and tiny fragrant pillows, let’s talk about the patriotism of the roof above. We ended up being forced (by a detour and the fact that we are maybe the only people left without a GPS or smart phone) to go through Lewiston-Auburn on our way out of Maine, a route that had nothing to recommend it, was stressful and mildly interminable. But this roof made it all worth it.

Mr. Crafty made a beautiful stained glass geometric lamp for our new home. The term for this form is… wait, hold on while I ask him again…

…”a great dodecahedron compound.“

Per his correction, below… “a dodecahedron, great-dodecahedron compound.” Because he is a math geek and artistic like that. It is so beautiful that I will probably flood this blog with many pictures of it and its amazing shadows. The lamp will hang over our dining room table. Above, you can see our wood stove, a Rais, which was a score on Craigslist. It has a little bun oven up top, with soapstone inserts, and a cute place to store some wood below. The stove is slowly making its lumbering way towards its final resting place in our home. It’s pretty close now.The mudroom is “porpoise” gray, a California color in a Ben Moore Natura eggshell base, if you are a paint geek. The white in our main living space is Ben Moore Simply White.Look at this amazing bed and desk combo designed and created by my dad, Jake and Sylvan, for Sylvan’s room! So beautiful and functional, for the boy who always has lots of projects going. Lots of details and a lovely finished product.These two photos, above, are of our downstairs, Garden/Grandparent Level (GL) bathroom. Currently it’s our only full bath, with shower, sink, and toilet. And now this very nice hand towel holder.Today we had a fantastic sojourn away from our all-consuming house project. Like getting a day away from the very demanding but wonderful baby! It was the annual lakeside celebration of two birthday buddies whom you may remember from previous years. It was the usual mix of hammock snuggling, gorgeous and talented (NICE, too) young people, delicious food and company, and this year: waterskiing! Sylvan, on his very first time out, got up on the skis! (Perfectly imaginable if you are familiar with Motion Boy, the Natural Athlete.) I got a great video of him on his first run, but I was enjoying the moment when he got up on the skis and not looking at my camera display, so for the first few seconds you get a really fantastic view of the wake of the boat.

In case you are wondering, there are actually two copies of The Time Traveler’s Wife in the picture in the hammock, and yes, someone is reading aloud from it. It is one of my favorite things, to see some of my most favorite books make the rounds between these beloved young people.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.